How to Hit Out of Thick Rough in Golf
Hitting out of thick grass in the rough will be challenging and can lead to extra un-wanted strokes on your golf score if you don’t get the ball to the green.
But don’t worry, I’ve got several golf swing tips to help you use the proper swing technique for hitting golf shots out of thick rough.
For starters, understand that you’re going to give up distance when you’re in the rough compared to hitting golf shots off fairway lies. The thick grass will grab your club face, slowing down your swing speed at impact.
As a result, you should take more golf club than normal to compensate for the lost distance.
To hit out of thick rough, you can also swing harder to generate more clubhead speed to fight through the thicker grass. This also means the ball will fly further than normal and upon landing it will have more roll to it.
To compensate we need to grip down the shaft more than normal, shortening the club and also shortening the backswing naturally by default. It will allow you to get more aggressive around the greens.
Ball position needs to be fairly centered in your stance. It will help the swing bottom out just behind the ball and utilize the bounce of the wedge.
Lastly, we need to slightly open the face at address. This will help expose more bounce on the clubface so it can slide through the grass under the ball rather than digging. It also adds loft which will help pop the ball up out of the rough creating a higher trajectory shot needed for landing the ball softly on the green.
During the swing you’ll need to utilize wrist hinge. We need to create speed and a steep, descending attack angle, using the wrists in the backswing. This is critical to producing repeatable shots.
After setting the wrist hinge early, you should be able to create a downward strike through the ball by unhinging the wrists in the downswing. The key, however, is to keep the club from re-hinging excessively in the follow-through.
The follow-through on this shot will also ideally only be as long, or shorter than, the backswing to ensure the clubhead doesn’t start moving upward to early through impact.
Overall, try out these golf swing tips and practice this swing set up technique for hitting shots out of thick grass when you find yourself in the rough.
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